HSU IT Department

And I'm excited!!

I love making words on paper with a pen. I love the glide of the ink, the feel of the pen in my hand, the curves and lines, the way letters build words, words build sentences, sentences build messages. I love the way a letter in an envelope looks and feels when it's all addressed and stamped and waiting to be sent: the perfect size, the neat square corners, the heft and firmness of cardstock, the fun of choosing a stamp from among the many designs and images. I am agog at the fact that a bunch of total strangers will pass this small fragile thing along for me, hand to hand, all the way across the country or even around the world -- it's like magic!! I love thinking about my letter arriving in a mailbox, sitting there like a friendly little long-distance wave, and someone opening it, and having a nicer day because they got something in the mail that wasn't a bill. A letter touches another person in a way an email can't. As the Smithsonian Postal Museum says on their blog, letters are "physical manifestations of the senders. The loved ones’ hands wrote the words, folded the letter and sealed it into an envelope. Each letter still brings with it that gift, a physical connection that can’t be replicated through phones or tablets."

I have a huge stash of cards, notecards, stationery, etc. which I am always adding to, and I enjoy sorting through it looking for just the right one for a particular person or situation. I also have a stash of all kinds of different stamps; every time I go to the post office I ask the clerk to show me what new designs they have. At the moment I have stamps featuring Scooby Doo, Hot Wheels cars, the art of magic, ice cream sundaes, Disney villains, sharks, cactus flowers, and our National Parks. Alas, I missed out on the Mr. Rogers stamps -- they sold out in just a few days.

The challenge of National Letter-Writing Month is (duh) to see how many letters you can write. And I'd like to write to YOU. No, seriously, I really would :)

If you'd like to get a letter from me, just comment here and say so.* In order to make my letter of interest to you, and so I don't end up writing ten different versions of "what I did this week," please also tell me something you're interested in (horror movies, biodiversity, fantasy novels, politics, writing, cake decorating, collecting stuffed wombats) or ask me a question (what's the best bodice-ripper I ever read? do I think college should be free? what happens when we die? is Queen Elizabeth actually a shape-shifting reptile alien?). Anything goes!

Here's the catch, though: When you get my letter, you must write me back. Nothing fancy is required -- literally anything will suffice, even two lines on a postcard. Are you game? Of course you are!!

* No need to provide your address in the comment; if I don't already have it, I'll send you a PM asking for it. Also I am more than happy to write to people overseas, so if you're not in the U.S., don't let that stop you!

...you will soon be able to sell it! Also some Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers (!), William Carlos Williams, Charlie Chaplin, Aldous Huxley, and Marcel Proust, thanks to copyright law. Wikipedia has a fairly complete list of titles.

So there you go. Get busy :)

Prompt claiming is open over at sshg-promptfest! Many luscious, fully ripe, ready-to-pick art/fic/craft ideas await your eager hands :)

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this amazing opportunity. Srsly :)

"The American Shakespeare Center, a regional theater company in Staunton, Virginia, is looking to stage new plays as companion pieces to William Shakespeare's classics -- all 38 of them.

'We're looking for remarkable playwrights from all walks of life. Do you have a great play that vibes off of Shakespeare's canon? Can you write a great play to be a companion piece to one of Shakespeare's plays? We want to see it.'"

Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape this offer. Get thee to a keyboard!!

Ah, cozy mysteries -- those wonderful oh-so-English mysteries, where tea and toast are sipped and nibbled, there's a cameo by a vicar, and the corpses are as neat and tidy as the gardens. Such fun to read and so satisfying, since the guilty party is generally someone who richly deserves being caught and convicted.

Ah, but have you ever written one? If so, now's your chance to get published! Minotaur Books is holding a best first mystery competition. Hop on over and give it a shot.

(Note: If I didn't know better, I'd suspect shiv5468 of having authored that book shown on the left under a nom de plume, because hey, peacocks!)

So I've started roughing out various ideas for my sshg_giftfest recipient, thinking about the different prompts, how they might be fleshed out, where they might go, how I can work in various elements. And I'm in so much trouble. Because I want to write All The Things. In fact multiple versions of All The Things. Seriously, I have at least seven different stories that are all tugging at my sleeve and whining, "Write me!" "No, write me!!" "Shut up, she's going to write ME!!"

This is a good thing, right? Right??

Submissions are open for two themed anthologies from Hic Dragones press:

Into the Woods -- "From magical places steeped in mysticism to evil foreboding places of unspeakable terror, the forest is a place of secrets, a place of knowledge, a place of death, and a place of life. But it is also a vulnerable place easily lost to the chainsaw and the drill. Our fascination with what may lie within the woods is an enduring one. Bewilder us, scare us, entertain us. Take us on a journey… into the woods..."

Nothing -- "Bleak landscapes, empty hearts, insignificant lives, dystopian futures, extinction, limbo, uncertainty, death. A beautiful void or a horrific state of being. The simple complexity of nothingness..."

It's a non-paying market but hey, at least you can say you got published :)

Short on prompts for that next fest? Desperate for an idea for your next original fic? Try PLOTTO: THE MASTER BOOK OF PLOTS!

The author, William Wallace Cook (1867-1933), knows whereof he speaks: he wrote more than a hundred novels under at least two names for pulp publisher Street & Smith, with titles like At daggers drawn, or, A pearl beyond price and Fools for luck, or, Caught in a strange trap.

I can't wait to track down a copy of this :)

Reveals are up over at mini_fest and happy_trekmas, so the last of the four fics I wrote for December fests can now be unveiled! (I know, I know, you've all been waiting, haven't you??)

nursedarry, whose fault it is that I'm here on LJ at all (smooches her), persuaded me to write for happy_trekmas this year. I wrote "Walk Beside Me", a series of missing scenes (all canon-compliant, natch!) that show the growth of the friendship between James T. Kirk and Spock. You can read it on the fest's LJ site or over on AO3. Rating is G, word count is 4156, and it's TOS all the way, no rebootin' AU here, nosiree bub.

For mini_fest this year I tried a pairing I've never done before (Severus and Petunia) and wrote a story called "A Part of Yesterday." One commenter was kind enough to say that "you made me like the horrid Petunia" :) It's angsty, of course, and bittersweet, but I enjoyed writing it very much since it was something I'd never done before, and I'm pleased with the way it came out. You can read it on the fest's LJ site or over on AO3. Rating is Teen/PG-13, word count is 6651, and it's entirely canon-compliant, so don't expect a happy ending.

(I've also now got my hoggywartyxmas spoof of "The Night Before Christmas" posted on AO3.)